


Twist Me Along Your Sky

by Cupcakemolotov



Series: come alive [16]
Category: The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Some angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-13
Updated: 2018-04-13
Packaged: 2019-04-22 05:00:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14301327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cupcakemolotov/pseuds/Cupcakemolotov
Summary: The day magic unraveled, Klaus died. To fix it, they needed Klaus.





	Twist Me Along Your Sky

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Klaroline AU Week.

Everything hurt.

Caroline could feel the snow melting underneath her bare fingertips. It smelled clean, beneath the blood and bone; the heavy, wet scent of wolf fur. Her bites burned, and some hysterical part of her found her impending death from werewolves to be amusing. Life had finally come full circle. 

Drifting, it was the unexpected silence that slowly roused her. Silence, when she'd been waiting for the carrion to find her on the deserted streets, and she struggled to lift her lashes. Coughing until she tasted blood, Caroline managed to roll onto her side, but her arms gave out before she could shift to a place that might have been defensible. Lashes parting for mere seconds she caught sight of boots and heavy pants, and she shivered as she sank back into the snow drift.

She hoped death would come swiftly.

Numb and frozen, she jolted when hot fingertips traced along her cheekbone.

"There you are," the softly spoken words from a ghost said. "I've been looking for you, Caroline."

* * *

When Klaus died, magic unraveled.

Caroline had always thought he'd like that little irony, that the effort needed to destroy him had ruined the very power used against him. As it turned out, Klaus hadn't been entirely wrong when he'd called himself a true immortal, but unlike Silas, killing him had been no simple task. White Oak was rare, and after centuries of rooting out any possible seeds, Klaus has ensured that it was nearly impossible to find. So instead, the witches had tried to unmake his bones and destroy the magic that had created him.

Bonnie had laughed when they'd finally pieced together what had happened, standing over the glass and ash of the ritual site. Hands fisted, eyes wild, and she'd laughed until she'd hunched over with her arms wrapped around her middle. Caroline had shivered at the utter lack of mirth.

"They unmade him," Bonnie said as she straightened. Smile wide and broken, she faced Caroline with glittering eyes. "They unmade us all."

Magic was unraveling and it was becoming new. And it was driving witches insane. No one understood at first, and those witches who had scried looking for answers had been the earliest casualties. The stronger the witch, the faster they had burned out; the more destruction they wrought in their wake.

There were pockets of magic that had survived - New Orleans, Haiti, a couple of the island religions - but Caroline would never forget turning on her TV and seeing that first catastrophe. The expression behind the witch's eyes as she opened a gate to something no human nightmare could've imagined, blood bubbling in her throat as she screamed for power. The manhunts had started then but they had been doomed from the start. The best society had managed in those early days had been to contain a witch until she burned herself out, but even that  had soon became impossible.

It'd been nearly sixty years since Bonnie Bennett had disappeared, but sometimes Caroline still had nightmares of their last goodbye. Something dangerous had crawled in Bonnie's veins, power that should never have walked this world.

"Its different, because I was an anchor," Bonnie told her, eyes distant. "It's different. Be careful, Caroline. I'm not the only nightmare. Not anymore."

Horrors walked the world. Things far more terrible than the vampires the witches had hoped to eradicate. No one could explain how vampires survived Klaus' unmaking; the rest of his family was imprisoned in the bowels of the earth. Magic was a finicky beast now, and the rules were all mixed up. What Caroline knew was that werewolves were feral with power and witches were hunted, while vampires and humans carved out small territories for themselves, and cautiously co-existed.

"It might've been something else," Bonnie told her as she turned to walk away, before her magic betrayed her completely. "If the Mikaelsons had survived."

But Klaus had been gone for years, and his siblings locked away in places Caroline could not follow. There was no prison world to breach for the hybrid, no do-over to hunt for. Mystic Falls was gone, world governments were moot and Caroline had walked away from the Salvatores years before. She wandered from place to place, looking. For what she'd never been completely sure. Early on, she had sometimes wandered into abandoned bookstores and would flip through the old travel guides, wondering. But a hundred and fifty years had taught her that old memories could cut deeply, and now she tried not to to let the what-ifs keep her up at night.

For the first time in her life, Caroline had been truly alone.

She'd thrived.

Of all places, she'd ended up in Chicago. New York had become a bloody territorial fight between the truly old, and Los Angeles was too warm to stay in safely. Nightmares apparently enjoyed beaches. New Orleans was holding its own, but Chicago? The brutal winters meant only a small population of humans struggled to maintain their survival and Caroline had been one of the first vampires to stake out a territory. It'd been small at first. Just a few blocks of what had once been a lovely section of downtown, in one of the few buildings that still had a solid foundation. Caroline had taken over the penthouse suite, and had converted it into something she could defend. What were a few stairs for a vampire? 

She'd discovered she was good at renovating, took pleasure in fixing things. Scrounging through wreckage for furniture, for good wood and the parts she needed was surprisingly relaxing in between the brutal fights necessary to hold her territory. Strangely, matching floorboards and gutting people's abandoned equipment for something salvageable allowed her to relax in her grind for survival.

To her surprise, slowly other apartments in the building started to fill with humans. Then the block around her building. Eventually, she'd worked out a system of blood for the promise of safety. She looked young, but Caroline knew how to fight dirty. It was necessary to put down enemies fast, as she couldn't afford debilitating injuries now that she was alone. A reduced population meant any accidents were costly. For fifty years, she and what she'd come to affectionately think of her humans had struggled to survive.

Then the wolves had come.

* * *

Caroline woke warm.

Tucked into a blanket, she recognized the feel of her couch, but it was the crackle of a fire her fuzzy brain couldn't quite comprehend. Taking a careful breath, she couldn't help the little hitching noise, the tightening of her fingers at a scent she hadn't forgotten in all the years since their last meeting.

"Hello, love."

She twisted and stared what had to have been a mirage from the werewolf venom. With wild curls, sharp cheekbones, and a tangle of necklaces, the man standing next to her fireplace was born from hundreds of old fantasies. For a moment, she couldn't breathe, she couldn't move, she was unable to think. Klaus Mikaelson was dead. Klaus was standing in her living room, and the ache in her chest hurt. And it was that ache that spurred her into action. Bonnie had told her Klaus was gone and in the end, Bonnie had _never_ been wrong. Fury turned the world red. If this was a witch playing with her while she died from werewolf venom, she'd do her best to make them _regret it._

Her lunge was futile. She never managed to so much as touch him. Shock turned her muscles rigid as she was pinned face first against a wall. The feel of the hot, male body against her spine enraged her. They even had his temperature right. There shouldn't have been a coven of witches who had meet him that still lived. Not with magic ravaging the watches. 

"Such a fierce vampire," Klaus' voice breathed against her ear. Caroline hissed, and tried to find leverage to make him hurt. Before she could figure out how a witch was holding her, there was a brush of beard against her neck and the sharp, quick pain of a bite. Caroline gasped and shuddered. He didn't linger, tongue a hot rasp against the wound before he spun her around so that she was facing him.

Her rage died in her throat as she took in the yellow eyes, the black veins and double fangs peeking from behind bloody lips.

The wound on her neck started to burn.

One hand fell away from where he had her pinned and maybe-Klaus brought his wrist to his mouth, ripping open the skin. The hot scent of his blood left her stomach trembling. Lips curled, every bloody memory she'd missed, he pressed his wrist against her lips.

"Come now, Caroline, let's not repeat the first time I bit you."

He tasted perfect.

Caroline was helpless against the greed of her vampire as soon as his blood touched her tongue. The blood high was a rush she rarely allowed herself, and somehow his blood was even better than she'd remembered. She'd have moaned at the rush of arousal, the need for more, if she had dared let go. He didn't allow her more than a few mouthfuls before he pulled his hand away. She stared at him in shock, chest heaving,

Gaze holding hers, he ran his thumb across her lips before licking away the blood.

"Klaus?" Her voice shook a little and the way his head canted, the open pit behind his eyes left her heart thumping.

Lips curled, Klaus bent his head. "Caroline."

He kissed her. Mouth sealing across hers, Klaus gripped the nape of her neck and slicked his tongue along her bloody lips. Caroline surged upwards and tangled her fingers in his curls, lips parting greedily to taste him. She growled a little when he just as quickly lifted his head, his pupils blown as his touch turned soothing. Her nails dug into his skin in a silent demand to return to her mouth, and he ignored it. 

"I'd forgotten," he murmured, breath a little fast.

Caroline took a slow breath and reluctantly attempted to calm her racing heart. "Forgotten?"

"How you smell, how you taste," he licked his lips, and something behind his gaze grazed down her spine like a warning. "Three hundred years, Caroline. I burned the world."

When she stepped away from him, he let her. Cautious, she watched him from wary eyes. "It hasn't been three hundred years since you died."

Klaus' smile was the edge of a knife. His gaze spoke of coveting, of desire, but it was hardly friendly. Caroline wouldn't let herself flinch.

"No," he agreed, head angling so the fire caught the yellow of his eyes. "It's been that long since _you_ died, love."

The sudden, stomach twisting knowledge that this might an elaborate hallucination had her clenching her fists. She clearly wasn't dead. Yet. But Bonnie had told her…

"Come now, Caroline. A witch is unlikely to be able to holds spell together long enough to maintain this illusion."

She didn't like that he could read her face.

"A coven might," Caroline said lowly. "And there a few of those left."

"To what purpose?" He asked, hands clasping behind his back.

"You tell me."

He laughed and paced towards her. Caroline set her heels in sheer stubbornness as he reached for a curl and rubbed it between his fingers. Something flared behind the brilliance of his gaze, and her monster itched along her skin.

"Still so lovely," he murmured before his eyes met hers. "Three hundred years ago, you sacrificed yourself to save me. Foolish, _foolish_ girl that you are."

She snorted. "I certainly did not."

"The Bennett witch informs me that I'm quite dead in this timeline," he said without acknowledging her comment. "It is fascinating, that two dissimilar events could bring about the same end result. Here, magic rips the world apart and in my timeline, I've become the monster they thought me. The world burns, regardless."

"Impossible," she said tightly. "Bonnie is dead."

She couldn't think about the fact that he said he was destroying the world. Because of her. That was impossible. She and Klaus were never _her_ and _Klaus_. When he died, she hadn't seen him in decades.

"Quite mad, but hardly dead," Klaus dismissed. "She shapes the magic of this world as surely as my death broke it."

Caroline snarled and shoved him away. "Don't lie to me. Bonnie died."

Klaus laughed. Dimples flashing deep, he looked at her furious face with such hunger. "To what purpose would I lie? For three hundred years I've laid a world to ruin, bled it dry and turned it to ash. And a single, mad witch decided to change fate. Here you stand before me, alive, and _alive_ you will _stay_."

The darkness in his voice left her staring. He believed every word. That she'd died. That Bonnie had snatched him from some alternate reality. A thousand questions lay on her tongue. Her words were ragged, when she finally found them. "I'm not her."

If this was real, if this was Klaus who had been ripped from some timeline only Bonnie could have seen...

"I do not need you to be her," Klaus said with glittering eyes as he shifted back into her personal space. "Just as you will find that you do not need me to be the your Klaus who is inexcusably dead. The Caroline I knew was still a child. A fascinating, glorious creature, but still so utterly new. She died for me. That will never happen again."

"You don't know me."

"One day, we will discuss the differences in our worlds until we pinpoint the exact moment our worlds changed. But make no mistake, Caroline, I know you." Klaus touched the hollow of her throat with careful fingertips. "Fierce creature that you are. I so look forward to seeing how you've grown into your skin. There will be differences of course, and I'm quite willing to categorize them with my tongue."

Mouth bone dry, she licked her lips. "Why would Bonnie bring you here?"

"Because one day, the magic will settle," Klaus said easily, continuing to skim his fingers along her skin. Touch starved, every part of her wanting, she couldn't bring herself to pull away. He spoke only when he reached her mouth, smoothing his thumb along her bottom lip.

"When the ashes clear, there you'll be. With me. For all the millennia that follow. You'll find, my love, that the lengths I will go to keep you with me are beyond even a nightmare's imagination."

Staring at the darkness in his gaze, heart hammering in her throat, Caroline believed him.

 

_**Please Comment** _


End file.
